### msn.com 1 hour agoReddy to be new governor-general
Source: NZ Newswire
New Zealand will have its third female governor-general after Dame Patsy Reddy was named to replace the outgoing Sir Jerry Mateparae. The lawyer and company director will succeed Sir Jerry when his five-year term ends in August, Prime Minister John Key announced on Tuesday. The governor-general is appointed on the recommendation of the prime minister. Dame Patsy, who is also a chief negotiator for Treaty of Waitangi settlements, worked with Sir Michael Cullen on the recent review of the security agencies. The 63-year-old is chairwoman of the Film Commission, deputy chairwoman of NZ Transport Agency, and was a former law lecturer at Victoria University and partner at law firm Minter Ellison Rudd Watts. She was previously on the board of blue chip companies Telecom, SkyCity, NZ Post and Air NZ.Read more

Bugger! And I was betting the farm on it going to Richie McCaw. He must have pissed John Key off somehow, turning down a knighthood and not being married wouldn’t have helped. Oh well, another time. He’s young enough yet.

We can only hope Patsy is not a patsy and does a Sir John Kerr and finds a pretext at some point to sack the government. Bugger the constitutional niceties!
Might be the only way to get rid of this government which looks a safe bet for a fourth term.

The way in which the Governor General is appointed has rightly been identified as a major issue. The Westminster System of government is dangerously short on checks and balances, and the version which is established in New Zealand is probably the most unbalanced of the lot.

We have a single house (Unlike every other Westminster system, which has two). In most cases the upper house has limited powers, but even the House of Lords in the UK can veto an Act of Self Perpetuation passed by the Commons.

A final defence is that legislation requires the Royal Assent, or a derived version of it, before it becomes law. This power is held in Ireland, for example, by an elected president. It was the exercise of this vestigial power of veto by the similarly elected Icelandic president Olafur Grimmson in 2010 (Icesave dispute) that saved Iceland from an Irish-style bank bailout at the ordinary citizen’s expense. He vetoed the ‘bought and paid for’ government legislation, and sent its toxic proposals to a national referendum, at which it as predictably rejected, much to Iceland’s long term benefit.

The exercise, in extremis, of this vestigial power relies upon the holder having some form of mandate. In many cases this comes from an elected public mandate. In the case of the UK, it comes from the peculiar historical mandate held by the Queen; a mandate that is dangerously dependent upon her own personal prestige. However, in that particular case it can be backed up by the Brigade of Guards and Household Cavalry if necessary, of which she rather than the Prime Minister is the Commander in Chief (Yes, this why they are there in the Capital).

In New Zealand, since the demise of appeal to the Privy Council in London, the Governor General is now the ONLY defence against a rogue government intent on performing an ECAN-style, democracy suppression exercise on a national scale. The fate of Environment Canterbury (ECAN) is a highly sinister development/precedent that has received nothing like the attention it deserves. There are no obvious parallels where elected government has been suspended for several cycles anywhere else in the democratic world – either with or without a real crisis to justify it.

To have appointment to this single remaining national defence in the gift of the Prime Minister, the individual that it primarily designed to safeguard against, is clearly highly undesirable. It is equally undesirable in that as a consequence, the Governor General clearly does not have the necessary mandate to support them in the moment of crisis that justifies their existence. Would Dame Patsy have won any kind of election? No. Could she/would she be able to defend this nation against a rogue government? No, for the same reason. I am not of the opinion that the Greens’ proposal for a parliamentary mandate of 75% for this position is adequate – Given the lack of other democratic safeguards, only a directly elected Governer General, via an open candidacy, would do.

It’s all about connections, either business success measured by how much is amassed and how many baubles are accumulated. But in this day of legitimate robbery the ‘one percenters’ get richer and the rest get the picture. Dame Patsy is honoured and will “maintain the office with integrity and dignity”. She says so herself, as she expresses surprise. Who cares? The position has long been a travesty of tradition which like the whole system is rorted and grovelled around by ‘wannabes’ displaying like ‘peacocks/hens’ a dysfunctional existence on the taxpayer, as if they really mean something to some people other than themselves. You toss out a few tokens, get your name on a building or two and spend the rest of your time navel gazing.
Pity she won’t have a new flag to wave.

Hype, you’ve just jogged my memory with “the Hip Vicar, guitars ‘n coffee” in the crypt [reminds me of Dwight Yoakam’s “Guitars, Cadillacs, and Hillbilly music”]. I recall that was my first ever gig. It was a Friday night and Johnny Taniwha Dodd was on bass. I had a tiny Concord amp and we were called Sordidi Senes [Latin for “the dirty old men”] . That would be pushing 5 decades ago! Maybe a more suitable name for us now?

A new case note has been published today setting out the reasons for sustaining a decision by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to withhold information concerning the award of a knighthood to Sir Paul Collins. Former Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverley Wakem formed the opinion that, whilst there was a public interest in disclosure of certain information concerning the process by which nominations were considered, this interest could be met by release of a summary of that particular information as well as the investiture information already in the public domain. No public interest was considered to exist sufficient to outweigh the interest to be protected (privacy, maintenance of constitutional conventions on confidentiality of communications and advice and free and frank expression of opinion).

Such secrecy ends up with people wondering what’s up. For instance, in NZ are honours for sale in return for donations to the political party that is in government at the time? Is it about gratitude for other favours done to certain highly influential individuals? These are not the kind of questions NZers should find themselves asking – but secrecy does not encourage trust in the integrity of the honours process.

With five months left to run on his tenure, Sir Jerry Mataparae talks with Lynn Freeman about highlights from his time in office, what is exciting about our universities’ work in science and innovation, rugby and his open heart surgery.